


a map of what matters most

by gruhukens



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Bittersweet, Canon Compliant, Coda, Communication, Coping, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Fix-It of Sorts, Love, M/M, Open/Hopeful Ending, Time Travel, Working Out My Feelings Through Fic, canon-typical tone, many pre-finale emotions in a trenchcoat pretending to be a story
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-09
Updated: 2021-02-09
Packaged: 2021-03-15 18:06:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 20,581
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29318352
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gruhukens/pseuds/gruhukens
Summary: “Is that abody,” Tim blurts before he can stop himself, rising to his feet. Martin looks, if possible, even more scared.“He’s alive!” he hisses, almost defensively. “It’s not - it’s not Gertrude again, I didn’t kill him, he just – I don’t know what happened to him, I just found him in the stacks like this.”“And you dragged him up here?” Tim says, and then registers several things at once – the build, the hair texture; the little round scars peppering a pair of thin hands and an awfully familiar face. “Wait, is thatJon?”----Jon stumbles back into an earlier Archive, looking for a way to fix the world. (Or, mom says it's my turn for the obligatory time travel au)
Relationships: Martin Blackwood/Jonathan "Jon" Sims | The Archivist
Comments: 98
Kudos: 332





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Yesterday is Here](https://archiveofourown.org/works/22230022) by [CirrusGrey](https://archiveofourown.org/users/CirrusGrey/pseuds/CirrusGrey). 



> set sometime late s5. arguably canon compliant; i guess we'll see???? several early plot points shamefully stolen from cirrus grey's "yesterday is here"; a gentle delight of a fic. i just had a LOT of thoughts about how late s5 jon and martin would map themselves onto the time travel situation and ideas of fate and destiny and how complicated that could get... and then fell down the rabbit hole and spent the last month entirely possessed by a haze of emotional introspection and terrifyingly long sentences. started making it, had a breakdown.jpg. bon appetit
> 
> i'm afraid i'm physically incapable of looking at this anymore, so it is very much unbeta'd: any plot, pacing, spag or characterisation mistakes in this are my own fault. please let me know if there are any issues or content warnings needed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> content warnings: none

It’s a rat. It must be. 

Not that Martin knows how a rat got in here: they’re two floors down and he’d think nothing could survive in the stacks, unless it lived on dust and paper. But he’d heard the clatter as he’d put his hand on the door, and now he can hear something scratching around on the other side.

Cautiously, he opens the door. Before he switches on the light, he could swear that he sees a slight yellow tinge darkening over the rows of stacks and papers and boxes – and christ, if the rat’s in the electrics, he thinks, they’re all _fucked._ It’s a forest of paper down here, and fuck if Martin knows what the fire procedures are. Plus he’s pretty sure the wiring’s not been updated since the place was built. It’s a disaster waiting to happen.

“Come on,” he says, ambling down the rows of turn-handle stacks, peering into the occasional darkened aisles. “Where are you? Not that I’d know what to do with you if I found you, mind, but I’m not gonna go back to Jon with reports of a weird noise and _no confirmed sighting,_ you know what a stickler he is for evide –“

The quiet, muffled noise from the next aisle cuts him off-mid flow. It doesn’t sound much like a rat anymore: bigger, he thinks. Almost human.

And then, in a creeping, crawling kind of terror he finally thinks of her: Jane Prentiss. He’s almost appalled that it took so long to occur to him - but she’s dead, he tells herself, she’s _dead_ , he’d gotten those ashes from the ECDC himself, put them on Jon’s desk. And he’s not trapped anymore: the stairs are clear behind him, and he hasn’t seen a single worm. Whatever it is, it’s not going to be her.

He still turns into the next aisle in a crawling, numb kind fear. 

It _is_ a human that he spots halfway down the slim corridor, clinging to the side of a bay on legs that are clearly struggling to stay upright. But it’s not Jane, he sees that immediately: it’s taller than her, with dark hair to her pale blonde. And more than that, it _moves_ differently. Which maybe would have sounded stupid a year ago, but he has found Prentiss’ movements difficult to forget: sinuous, undulating and jerky. Much like a worm, he thinks, and immediately wishes he hadn’t. 

But it’s not her. It isn’t anyone Martin recognises, he thinks. Not until he sees those small, round scars, shiny and familiar on the thin arm outstretched to him.

When Jon stumbles off the side of the bay and into him, Martin - still processing _Jon, down here, not Prentiss,_ Jon _, and he’s staggering, is he hurt?_ \- opens his arms automatically to catch and steady him. Jon hits him with a surprisingly solid force; he doesn’t slow at all, almost like he was expecting Martin to catch him.

To his astonishment, Jon’s arms go around his neck and tighten in an embrace. He pulls himself into Martin’s chest.

“Martin,” he says, gently - in relief, in reassurance. Then he passes out.

* * *

Before Martin bursts through the stacks doors like a hurricane, Tim is having a fairly normal day.

He doesn’t take that kind of thing for granted anymore, especially not so soon after Prentiss. It’ll wear off soon enough, he figures, but in the meantime it’s nice to get a little temporary boost from worm-free steps at the Institute doors, and boring, uneventful shifts. So he’s humming as he shoots an email off to the Met, glad Jon’s not here to raise a disapproving eye at the noise. 

He hears Martin coming before he sees him; fast, off-balanced footsteps, panicked breathing as he thunders up the basement steps. It gives him enough time to feel a kind of incongruous, despondent resignation, of all things - he knew it was too good to last, he thinks, it must be the fucking worms again, or whatever Sasha saw that she won’t talk to him about anymore, or -

Then Martin’s shouldering open the door to the stacks with alarming force, panic written over the lines of his face. In his arms he’s cradling a human person, and all of Tim’s fatalistic passivity falls away on seeing it: for a brief, heartstopping moment, he’s sure that he’s about to be accomplice to a murder.

“ _Is that a body_ ,” he blurts before he can stop himself, rising to his feet. Martin looks, if possible, even more scared.

“He’s alive!” he hisses, almost defensively. “It’s not - it’s not _Gertrude_ again, I didn’t _kill_ him, he just – I don’t know what happened to him, I just found him in the stacks like this.”

“And you dragged him up here?” Tim says, and then registers several things at once – the build, the hair texture – the little round scars peppering a pair of thin hands and an awfully familiar face. “Wait, is that _Jon?_ ”

“He said my name,” Martin tells him, an odd note to his voice. Almost pleading. “What was I supposed to do, just leave him?”

Tim doesn’t really know how to argue with that, so he just does the only thing he can think of, and motions for Martin to follow him to the bed that Martin used to use in Doc Storage.

“Come on,” he says, in a tone that he hopes brooks no argument, because Martin looks like he’s on the verge of tears or a panic attack, or both. 

And it works, or at least mostly: Martin does seem ready enough to follow him over to document storage, but when they’re standing at the side of the cot, he seems reluctant to let go.

As he dithers, Tim almost snaps at him – _this isn’t the time for your puppy crush, Martin_ – but Martin’s clearly panicked and Tim isn’t that much of an ass, and in the end Martin does set him down without too much of a fuss.

When they finally get a good look at him, Martin draws in a breath: he doesn’t say anything. Tim doesn’t say anything either, not for a long while.

And then he finally voices what he’s sure Martin’s already thinking.

“That’s not Jon,” he says, gesturing unnecessarily. “Look at him. It can’t be.”

“But it’s got to be,” Martin says, in a very hushed voice. “I mean, he’s always had that little scar between his eyebrows – you can _see_ it, Tim, it’s just –“

It’s just the hair – inches longer than it had been when Tim had seen him this morning, and fully greying, not slightly peppered anymore. And the clothing – post-apocalyptic, Tim would almost say, which would be hilarious if Tim could stop to think about it, because he’s pretty sure Jon would die in five hours without his steady diet of paperclips, plastic recorder tapes, and complaining about statement givers.

And the scars. Tim doesn’t know how to start thinking about those.

But Martin’s right about one thing. The thin, faded line between his eyebrows, the one that connects his furrowed eyes when he frowns – Tim knows that scar already, at least, as long for as he’s known Jon. He’s teased Jon about that scar, on more than one occasion.

“Okay,” Tim says, pacing a few steps away and then back again. This is fine, he tells himself. This is fine. This is nothing compared to haunted books, and secret tunnels, and evil worms. “So, it isn’t, but maybe it is. Maybe there’s a whole host of weird, alternate-universe us’s just – fucking around in the stacks. Didn’t manage to catch a weird, shaggy-haired me having a kip in the 1940s section, did you?”

“It’s not funny,” Martin says shortly, balling his hands into fists. “Just _look_ at him. What’s happened to him? God. Oh my god, what if this Jon replaced _our_ Jon?”

It’s a stupid idea, but also they are standing over the unconscious body of their not-quite boss, so Tim’s not ready to dismiss any ideas at the moment.

“Call him?” he suggests to Martin, but Martin’s already on his phone and pulling up his contacts. 

“Jon?” he says hesitantly, putting it to his ear. Tim relaxes as soon as he hears the sharp, familiar tone at the other end of the line. “Yeah, no, everything’s fine, it’s just – no, I know – no, it’s fine – yes, it can wait until you get back –“

He doesn’t get another word in from then until the end of the phone call, as far as Tim can tell.

“Still alive,” Martin says mulishly, staring down at the phone in his hands. “Still definitely Jon.”

“But you didn’t tell him?” Tim says, but he knows that’s a stupid question as soon as he opens his mouth. Martin seems to think so too, from the way he rounds on Tim.

“What was I supposed to _say?_ ” he hisses. “Come back, Jon, we’ve found your – your – weird _doppelganger_ in the basement, and he passed out in my –“

Tim stares at him until a faint flush rises in Martin’s cheeks.

“In my arms,” he says very quietly, looking at his hands. “God, Tim. You should have heard him. He said – I don’t know, it was so weird.”

“What did he say to you?” Tim asks him curiously, but Martin’s clearly had enough: he shuts up in the kind of way where Tim knows he won’t get anything else out of him.

“Nothing,” he says shortly. “Just my name.”

“Not that weird,” Tim points out. “He says it all the time. _Good Lord, Martin. Don’t be ridiculous, Martin. File this for me, Martin.”_

“Yeah,” Martin says ominously, but Tim doesn’t get a chance to try and drag anything else out of him, because that’s when the other Jon stirs and blinks.

It takes less than a second after he wakes for him to seem to realise where he is; then Tim watches as the pain, or something like it, hits him like a hammer blow. He curls over curled into himself with a sharp movement that’s almost violent, taking deep, short breaths, his hands at his temples.

“ _Jesus,_ ” Tim says, but Martin’s already got a steady hand on one shoulder and is checking the other Jon over for something. Wounds, Tim supposes, breaks or something, but it’s strange. Something in the way he does it looks - rehearsed. Clinical and capable, in the kind of detachment Tim wasn’t aware Martin was capable of, especially not where Jon is concerned. But when Martin glances up at him and sees Tim watching him, he frowns.

“Don’t ask,” he tells Tim shortly, as the other Jon’s fingers gradually ease from where they’re clenched at his temples. “I, um. I can’t see any obvious issues - Jon, can you hear me? Can you tell me where it hurts? If it’s his head, Tim, we might need an ambulance, better safe than sorry -“

“No,” the other Jon says, eyes snapping open. “No, no ambulance, Martin, I - oh my god. _Tim_.”

“Jon?” Tim asks uneasily. He doesn’t like the tone in Jon’s voice, or the way the other Jon’s looking at him - a haze of pain that looks like it’s slowly receding, but underneath it something uncomfortably raw. “Uh? Boss?”

“Sorry -“ the other Jon says, but he’s still staring at Tim. “Sorry, just give me a moment to get used to it, I - God, Martin, is that you?”

“Uh, yeah?” Martin says nervously. “Jon? You - feeling okay? Is it passing?”

“Yes,” the other Jon tells him, in a much more gentle tone than Tim’s used to hearing from him. “Thank you, Martin. I’m - just getting used to - um, here, again. It - well, it’s fine, it’s - it’s complicated, but I should be all right in a minute.”

“What happened?” Tim asks him curiously, and the other Jon swings that unnervingly intense gaze back at him. It feels a little like being memorised - this other Jon not just keeping eye contact, but tracing over the features of his face with an expression a little like wonder.

At least, until he processes Tim’s question: then he winces, uncomfortably.

“Um, it’s complicated?” he says. “I wouldn’t really know where to begin. And it’s - it’s loud, here. Difficult to concentrate.”

It is, in fact, utterly silent. Tim tactfully decides to let this one slide. 

“So, um. Well, where are the rest of us, then?” he asks instead. “Got any more of us creeping around in Doc Storage, or just you? Gotta admit I wanna know if I get on that silver fox treatment too.”

This seems to devastate this other Jon, in a way that makes the bottom of Tim’s stomach begin to stir unpleasantly.

“Oh. _Oh_ , God, um -“ he starts painfully. And then, unexpectedly, every trace of emotion washes off his face in an instant. “Hang on, wait. What?”

“Well, you came through,” Tim points out reasonably. “What about the rest of us? Or wait – shit – shouldn’t we ask about that kind of stuff? If you’re from the future or something, will knowing about us mess with the timeline, or whatever?”

“I - God, I hope so, I just - you said there was just me?” the other Jon says, looking at Tim very directly. “You didn’t see anyone else?”

“Ask Martin,” Tim offers. “First I knew about it he was bursting through the doors with you cradled in his arms, like some kind of bodice-ripper hero.”

It’s strange, the moment that the other Jon takes before he looks at Martin again: drawing a breath, straightening his shoulders, like the motion of just looking at him is something he needs to prepare for. Tim can’t account for it.

Martin’s already shaking his head, chewing at his lip.

“I mean, I didn’t see anyone?” he says. “But I don’t know, it all happened so fast – as soon as you passed out, I brought you upstairs, I – uh – panicked. I can go back downstairs and check.”

“I -“ the other Jon says to himself, eyes wide and blank, looking away again. “I don’t understand, he - yes. Of course. Back downstairs.”

When he pushes himself off the bed, he sways, and Tim would swear he would have hit the floor without Martin automatically putting out an arm to steady him.

In the end, Martin has to half carry him down the stairs: he won’t let Tim or Martin go without him, but after Martin catches him again halfway through another fall, he seems to resign himself to it. But the whole way down he’s turned as far away from Martin as he can get, his eyes screwed tight as if he’s in real pain. 

When they get downstairs and switch on the light, the room that greets them is silent and empty. Tim thinks he knows the answer already, but he dutifully checks each open aisle, flipping on the extra lights as he goes. The other Jon and Martin follow a few paces behind. Nobody makes a sound.

At the end of the room, the other Jon carefully disentangles himself from Martin. 

“There’s nobody here,” he says, quietly, putting a hand against the wall to steady himself. His voice is still so empty. Tim’s never heard it like that before. Irritated, or fond-but-irritated, or dripping with sarcasm, or tired – but never that complete lack of intonation before.

“Might be they got lost elsewhere in the Institute. It’s a big place,” Martin says reassuringly, but when he moves towards the other Jon again, he flinches and draws into himself. He hasn’t looked at Martin once since hearing Martin’s explanation upstairs.

“Martin,” the other Jon says quietly, still not looking at him. “I’m sorry to have to ask this of you, and please believe I mean no offence. But I - you - just for a short time, would you please remain quiet.”

It’s nicer than Jon usually words it, but for some reason that just makes it sound even worse. At least when Jon’s offhandedly being a dick, Tim can tell himself he doesn’t know better. 

He’s opening his mouth to say something about it when Martin elbows him and frowns. He gives a shrug that pretty clearly says _it’s okay_ , even if Tim recognises the upset in the tightness of his jaw.

“Michael,” the other Jon says, and hits his head tiredly against a stretch of wall. “Open up. I know you’re listening, and I _know_ you can reach in here. I can _see_ you. This isn’t a threat, I just want to talk.”

 _“Fascinating,”_ a voice says from behind them. “ _T_ _he Archivist, but not. However did a thing like you end up here?"_

The man who steps out from the new yellow door is - well, he isn’t anything like a man at all, really. Or he is and then he isn’t, and then he is again - bits and pieces of him switching and changing even as Tim looks over him. Like a kaleidoscope of a human, Tim thinks. Constantly changing before he can fix on any one image.

Some parts of him seem to stay the same, however - his looming height, his long, blonde hair and his pointed and elongated fingers. And it’s only when Tim hauls these particular thoughts through the mire of panic his mind has become that he puts the pieces together: blonde hair. Long fingers. Tall and slim. This, he realizes, must be Sasha’s Michael.

“ _J_ _esus_ ,” Martin breathes, from beside him. “Oh my god. Oh my _god._ ”

“Through your doors, as you well might know,” the other Jon is already answering, with every appearance of familiarity. “Michael, I need you to tell me exactly what happened. Please believe that if you don’t, I can and will rip it out of you.”

“ _No threats, is what you said,”_ Michael says, leaning casually up against the doorpost. _“That didn’t last long, I see. How impolite of you.”_

“ _Who_ passed through the door?” the other Jon presses, and for a moment Tim could swear he hears the rise of tape static, of all things: that low crackle and fuzz he hears from Jon’s office every now and then. “Me, and -?”

“ _No need for that_ ,” Michael tells the other Jon, eyeing him with increased interest. “ _I’m happy to tell you without that unpleasantness. Although I sense you won’t much like the answer - no-one. Apart from yourself, of course. Although I suspect, deep down, you_ knew _that already?”_

The other Jon doesn’t say anything at all. His eyes are so blank. He sways again on his feet, minutely.

_“Were you expecting someone else? A parade of Archivists, perhaps? That is what you are, aren’t you?”_

“You’re sure,” the other Jon says quietly, almost to himself, ignoring Michael’s question entirely. “Only - only myself who - who passed through, at least. But your corridors - Michael, I can’t see, I - but you could look? F-for anyone lost inside?”

The laugh that the man gives at that.

“ _I_ _can, although you’ve not much endeared me to try -“_

“I have other methods of persuasion at my disposal,” the other Jon says immediately, and a feeling like a shiver seems to run through the very stones of the building. “Especially here.”

 _“Threaten or plead as you like, but it still won’t do much good,”_ Michael says, unflappably, and then his smile begins to morph and stretch just slightly in a way that makes Tim want to run, want to hide, want to cover his eyes and _scream_. “ _I think you_ know _that already, too. I think you_ know _as well as I do who and what I am, how far and twisted I stretch - further, deeper than you or even I know - and what that means for whoever you’ve lost within my dear, hallowed halls -“_

The other Jon slams the door in the man’s face, and turns away. His eyes are fixed on nothing Tim can see, and he looks like he might be sick.

“Uh, Jon?” Tim says carefully. When he rests a hand hesitantly on this Jon’s thin shoulder, the other man takes a deep, harsh breath, as if he’s fighting not to shake it off. “Who were you looking for?”

“Nobody,” the other Jon informs him shortly, after he takes one more moment of quiet. Tim - from a sense of genuine sympathy - decides it’s best not to call this out for the obvious lie it is, and stays silent on it. “I - I’ve wasted enough time. Tim, you’ve seen the worms? Jane Prentiss?”

“Up close and personal,” Tim says. “Um. Which I thought you’d know, seeming as you have the same scars as - as our Jon. _Christ,_ this is weird. Why?”

The other Jon grinds the heels of his hands into his eyes. Martin is still quiet, looking between the two of them with eyes wide behind his glasses.

“I need you to tell me where Sasha is,” the other Jon says. “And then I need to go and visit Elias.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> many smarter writers than i have come up with better solutions to the "two jon problem", i'm sure. sweet readers, i am sorry: i no longer have any conception of how jarring this phrasing is, so "the other jon" remains the best i can do


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> content warnings: none

When Tim tells him Sasha’s out, the other Jon seems to relax, at least a little. He won’t tell them why he’s asking - just to get a bead on all of them, Tim would like to assume - and he also won’t tell them why he’s going to speak to Elias.

He also point-blank refuses to let any of them come with him for that. Not that Tim’s surprised he’s refusing Martin’s offer of help - he’s still being weird about Martin, for no reason he’s cared to explain to them yet; he’d fairly slammed himself into the wall when he slipped on the stairs back up, instead of letting Martin take his elbow to steady him - but he won’t let Tim come with him either.

“Out of the question,” he tells them bluntly. “I’m sorry, but what Elias and I have to discuss is private. When Sasha and - Christ - well, myself, I suppose - when everyone is back, I will explain as much as I can. In the meantime, I’m perfectly recovered to walk up the stairs and back, thank you very much.”

He _is_ looking better: well enough that Tim doesn’t really have a leg to stand on to argue that he should come, although Martin is still looking peevish and upset in his peripheral vision.

He looks better still when he returns from upstairs: healthier, more filled out somehow, even if he still seems bent under some enormous weight. Tim doesn’t know what to make of that.

In a weird kind of way, his gathering health makes the differences from their Jon all the more striking. It’s not just the scars - they stand out more than before, Tim notices, in a kind of sinking hurt; burns on his hand, a slash across his throat - but the way he carries himself. Jon is a small man who walks like he’s trying to be bigger - this Jon walks like it doesn’t matter to him who, or what he is. Like he knows the world will size itself around him. It doesn’t sit comfortably on him.

“Is Sasha back yet?” the other Jon asks, pausing just inside the door. “Or what about, um, me?”

“We already called him, before,” Tim tells him. “He’s out getting some research from the British Library today, he should be back this afternoon. Sasha’s not back yet either - should be soon, though, she was only following up a lead in Bloomsbury. What, uh - everything with Elias go okay?”

The other Jon just frowns, and slumps in a chair by the entrance to the office, curled into himself.

What follows is _the_ most uncomfortable silence Tim’s ever sat through, even though there have been several instances with their Jon recently that come close. Tim doesn’t much like being stalked any more than your average person, he thinks, and he doesn’t much know how to pretend that that’s fine.

But this is different: this is something he doesn’t even know the size of yet. Prentiss was - a lot of things, terrifying, brutal, painful, but she wasn’t personal. But _this -_ Jon, who Tim likes even if he regrets that fact sometimes, and what this Jon represents, their _future_ \- Tim doesn’t know how to reconcile that, and he’s sure Martin doesn’t either.

Martin seems to have taken the other Jon’s earlier words to heart: he’s keeping quiet and still some distance away from the other Jon, who still doesn’t seem capable of looking at him. But he seems to maintain some strange sense for where Martin is, despite this. Every time Martin moves, even slightly, the other Jon flinches minutely.

And it’s this that breaks Tim in the end: thinking of all the reasons why the other Jon could be acting this way leads him in a spiral that starts nowhere good and only catastrophizes from there, and he’s never been very good at sitting on things for long.

“Martin’s dead, isn’t he,” he blurts eventually, when he can’t sit on it for any longer, and hears Martin inhale sharply. “Your Martin, I mean. Sorry Martin, but he’s just being so _weird_ about it. Is that why you’re back? To stop it?”

The other Jon just flinches again, and curls closer into himself. He doesn’t make a sound, or look at him, and Tim is _tired_ of waiting for this.

“Jon,” he says, and when he still doesn’t get an answer, “Jon. _Jon_.”

“I - I don’t know,” the other Jon tells him heavily. He puts a hand to his face - horrified, Tim thinks he might see tears on the other Jon's cheeks. “I think so. Maybe. But I swear to you, Tim, I will change things here. It won’t work out the same for any of you, not if I can help it.”

“Jesus. Any-any of us?” Martin says tightly. He’s wide-eyed and grey, and shrinking into himself by the second. “What? I’m - I’m - and what about Tim and Sasha, what - Christ, Jon, what _happened_ to us?”

The other Jon turns a helpless gaze on Tim, and suddenly Tim can’t hear for all the blood rushing in his ears. Jon’s opening his mouth to speak, but Tim cuts him off.

“So then. How many of us are dead, where you came from?” Tim asks him, through stiff lips. “Me and Martin - don’t bother pretending, it’s written all over your face - but Sasha too?”

“Tim, I swear to you,” the other Jon tells him desperately, instead of explaining, and he’s still not answering Tim’s _questions_. “I’m already changing things, it won’t happen for you. It’ll be better, okay?”

“How can I trust anything you say?” Tim spits at him. “You just show up - no explanations at all, can’t take a single second to try and clue us into what’s happening, now we’re all - _dead_ to you, or whatever, but you still won’t tell us what’s happening, how are we even supposed to trust you?”

The other Jon takes one very deep breath in, and lets it out again.

“Do - do you remember my birthday party?” he asks, and his voice is painfully, pointedly calm. “The first few months that we worked here?”

This is so beyond anything Tim expected him to say that when he opens his mouth to reply, he finds there’s simply nothing he can think to say.

“I didn’t,” the other Jon continues. “I’d forgotten all about it until - until recently, actually. Do you remember buying me that wine? And the cake that you’d hidden for later?”

“The - god, right, yeah, but what does a bloody Tesco’s Victoria Sponge have to do with anything?” Tim manages.

“Nothing, really,” Jon says, closing his eyes for a moment and grimacing. “Except that - I was tired, and stressed, and an awful boss - I was, please don’t try to be polite, I know I was trying, but - you still all pitched in for it anyway. Even forced me to wear that stupid paper hat.”

“Are you saying you’re here to try and save us because… we threw you a birthday party?” Tim says, slipping dangerously close to angry again. “You can’t be serious, Jon, I -“

“I didn’t come here to save you at all,” Jon tells him bluntly. “Not on purpose, we - _I_ had other intentions. But now that I’m here, I need you to trust me in this: that I _will_ do everything in my power to save you, because I _know_ you, all of you. And, more than anything else, I believe that you deserve to be saved.”

The tone of earnestness and pleading in his voice is so nakedly clear that Tim finds his anger dissolve almost immediately, like snuffing a candle flame.

“Now I know you’re not our Jon,” he tells the other Jon, after a moment. It’s not the easiest joke he’s ever made, but it’s as much as he can do right now. “I don’t think he could get halfway through that without breaking into hives. Jesus. What happened to him to get you like this?”

“Trust me,” the other Jon tells him, deflating. There’s a touch of dark humour in his voice. “I really don’t think you don’t want to know.”

From the corner, Martin makes a little questioning noise that makes Tim jump: he’d almost forgotten Martin was still there. From the pained look sliding back onto the other Jon’s face, he thinks the other man had too.

“Can I - uh, is it okay if I speak yet?” Martin asks the other Jon, who nods but squeezes his eyes closed. He still hasn’t looked at Martin once since their conversation shortly after waking, or at least not that Tim’s seen.

“What is wrong, exactly, does it actually - hurt?” Martin asks quietly. “Like whatever was happening to you when you woke up?”

“No,” Jon says, voice thick, and finally he raises his eyes to meet Martin’s gaze. “That was different, that was just getting used to being here, this is - it’s complicated. It’s just - difficult to see you like this. I’m sorry. It’s alright though, Martin, I - I want to hear what you have to say.”

“So why _are_ you here?” Martin asks him, words clipped as though trying to push them out as fast as possible.

That’s when Sasha opens the door.

There’s a moment of ringing silence where she and the other Jon just stare at each other, Martin’s question completely forgotten. On Sasha’s face is, after a brief, initial moment of surprise, a look that Tim’s never seen before - cruel, proud, satisfied somehow. It sits all wrongly on her. 

And then before Tim can process any of this, they both _leap_ for each other, Jon off his chair like a shot, Sasha slamming the door behind her - but she twists as moves in a way that’s impossibly wrong, her limbs elongating, like Sasha but stretched somehow -

Tim’s on his feet before he can think about it, sprinting towards them. But before he can reach them, there’s a strong hand on his arm, pulling him back. Ahead of him, Sasha hits Jon and they collide against her desk.

“It’s not her!” Martin says, in his ear. “God, oh my god - Tim, you saw her - whatever that is, it isn’t _human_ , can’t you feel it?”

“I don’t care!” Tim says, ripping Martin’s hand off him. “So what - it’s still her, it’s Sasha, he’s hurting her, what’s _wrong_ with you -“

Then it laughs.

Tim has never heard a laugh like that before - high, seemingly split into a thousand voices. It sends shivers running up his spine, strong enough that it feels like nausea. Jon has Sasha pinned up against the desk, just staring at her - but she's just laughing.

But that’s not Sasha, Tim thinks numbly, Sasha doesn’t laugh like that. She hasn’t laughed in months, but he's sure she’s never sounded like that.

Martin doesn’t make any more moves to restrain him again, but Tim doesn’t take another step.

“Oh, Archivist!” Sasha says, and her voice sounds _wrong_. “And I was having such fun! How _funny_ he was - oh, _Sasha,_ are you feeling okay, Sasha, do you want to talk about it Sasha, I’m here if you need me -“

“Shut up,” the other Jon snaps at it, and this is the first thing he’s done since Tim’s met him that breathes a little spark of like into Tim’s chest, despite all of the mounting horror and hurt pouring into him. “You don’t get to talk about _any_ of them like that.”

“I can do anything I like,” Sasha tells him. “What are you going to do? You couldn’t stop me from taking her.”

“Not then, I couldn’t,” the other Jon spits at her, and his voice _crackles_ with a power that makes the hairs on the back of Tim’s neck stand on end. “But now I can see - I can _see_ her. And you’re going to give - her - back.”

The rise in static is so loud Tim slaps two hands over his ears, reeling backwards onto the floor. It seems to go on and on and on, bleeding through his palms and drilling right into his brain. It feels, endlessly and awfully, like being _seen_ , like being pinned down on some lepidopterist’s board and examined. He thinks, in the middle of all of it, he can hear the other Jon yelling something, but he can’t begin to make out the words.

It takes a while to clear, and the silence that gathers afterwards sounds loud and ringing somehow. When finally, Tim thinks it might be safe to look up again, he sees two things. The other Jon, whole and unharmed, and what he’s staring at: a small woman sitting on the floor in front of them.

He doesn’t recognise her. Or at least, he thinks he doesn’t. She’s small, and broad, with big dark eyes, and her braids are long, swept up in one big plait over her shoulder - and that’s as far as Tim gets before a wave of confusion so strong as to be nausea washes over him.

Beside him, he can hear Martin gasping for breath. Even the other Jon seems to have trouble looking at her, that Tim can tell - when he throws a glance his way, he’s still staring at her, but his eyes are furrowed, face set in some deep strain.

“T-tim?” the woman says, and her voice is and isn’t familiar in a way that _hurts_. Tim covers his ears. “God, please, Tim, please - it’s - it’s me? Isn’t it me?”

“It’s okay, Sasha,” the other Jon tells her gently. Tim watches as he kneels beside her, and puts a cautious hand on her knee. “You’re alright. It’s gone, it’s just you now.”

“What happened?” Sasha says - and just like that Tim knows it _is_ her, it is Sasha. 

The realisation isn’t like Tim might expect it to be; there’s no click as a million different memories slot into place. The other her, the fake one, is still superimposed over everything he remembers of her, drinks at the pub and throwing pens at Martin and walking through Hyde Park.

But he knows her, without even knowing how. Like a muscle memory. _How do you forget a best friend_ , Tim thinks, and feels sick all over again.

“The table -“ the other Jon manages, and that’s as far as he gets before Tim shoves him out of the way to scoop her up in a hug.

She fits into his arms just right: which is to say not really, awkward angles and a cold nose pressed into his neck, but the discomfort is all completely like he feels it should be. She even smells the same as she should, like nothing he can put his finger on. Just Sasha. Tim can’t believe he’d ever forgotten.

“Sash? Sasha?” he says into her hair. “I - Jesus, all that time - I had no idea. I’m _such_ a twat.”

“Don’t care,” she tells him roughly, muffled by the fabric of his shirt. “It’s fine now. It’s okay.”

When he looks over her shoulder, the other Jon is still kneeling beside them, looking Tim quietly in the eye. There’s no trace of that otherworldly power on him now - he just looks old, and worn, and gentle in a way that Tim didn’t know he was capable of.

“Do you trust me now?” the other Jon says.

* * *

It was a miserable day even before Jon stumbled back into the office to a woman who looks like a headache, and a stranger who resembles himself so entirely that for a moment he thinks he’s looking into a mirror. And Martin. 

At least Tim is a nice, normal sight, even if he does look drained and tired. He tries to give Jon a smile. It doesn’t help.

“Wonderful,” Jon says after he tries and fails to process all of it, dropping his file of papers on the shelf by the door. “Great. Perfect. Um - would anybody like to explain. _Any_ of this.”

“Martin found _him_ ,” Tim says helpfully; Jon thinks he’a trying for upbeat, but his voice lacks its usual warmth. “And then _he_ found Sasha and pulled her out from inside a monster. He also may have murdered Elias, so -“

“I didn’t _murder Elias -“_ says the other Jon in a tired, disgusted voice that sounds bone-chillingly like his own. Jon grips the shoulder strap of his bag more tightly. “Of all the -“

“Oh, you _knew_ that was the implication,” Tim tells him, and he sounds like he’s getting his spark back; he keeps darting looks at the woman as if judging her reaction. “Face like thunder and you told us you were gonna go “visit” him? Just talked to a murder-finger ghost in the wall? What were we supposed to think?”

“Sasha?” Jon says, staring at the woman, who’s shorter than Sasha, but isn’t - and her hair isn’t buzzed like Sasha’s is, it’s in long braids, just like Sasha’s used to be -

“Don’t think too hard about it,” Martin advises him, hesitantly. “It took a second to get used to, but it’ll mostly even itself out before long. And she’s okay - she says, she’s not ready to go home yet. I think Tim’s gonna keep her company for a while.”

“Can speak for myself, Martin,” the woman reminds him. At the sound, Jon clutches his temples against the sudden wave of a headache. “Sorry, Jon. But it’ll wear off soon.”

“ _What_ is happening,” he asks, out into the room more than at any one of them specifically, and that’s when the stranger with his face finally addresses him.

“Would you like to step into the office?” he says, with a touch of grim humour. “Yours or mine, I suppose. We have a lot to discuss.”


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> content warnings for concerns about unreality and derealisation

Jon thinks, on the whole, he is very patient about the whole thing. He lets the other him lead him through to his own office, and sit in his chair, and spin him some long, convoluted explanation about cults and fears and gods.

It is one of the most difficult conversations Jon thinks he has ever had. Not that the other him is poor at explaining it; he takes Jon through a lot very slowly and clearly, point by point - fourteen fears, the statements, Elias working against them, the danger to Tim and what had happened to Sasha. That he’s here from the future, or another future at least, to recover try and recover information that he couldn’t access in his own timeline - “the Archives,” he says, in something that sounds like wry humour, “are - inaccessible to me, in a sense” - in the hopes of taking it back to his own time to fix - something.

That point he’s not clear on, at least. Jon would ask, but he’s too busy wrapping his head around all the rest of it.

Because it is just _so much._ And the worst part of it is that it should all be completely impossible to believe, fears and gods and all the rest of it - but it still makes just slightly too much sense, in a way Jon can’t begin himself to try and face.

“How do I know that - any of that - is true?” he asks his double, when it’s finally finished. Because it can’t be, he’s decided. His own feelings be damned: it’s too much. It just can’t. “That’s - that’s quite a tale, but the only thing you’ve actually given me to go on is your word.”

“You’ve seen Michael and Prentiss already, of course. But the rest of it - you already knew a lot of it, deep down, didn’t you?” the other Jon says. “Knew, or felt?”

Jon brushes that aside, with a mounting feeling of safe, reasonable irritation.

“Well, even if - if parts of it _are_ true,” he says. “You just told me you saved Sasha from some - some replacement _thing,_ so how am I supposed to trust a word that comes out of your mouth? You could have just - taken my shape, or whatever.”

“When you broke up with Georgie, you went on the carousel at London Zoo with an Oxford friend you don’t even remember anymore,” his other self tells him, in a tone that sounds almost patronisingly gentle. “He’d suggested it. You thought it would be stupid, but it went faster than you expected. And it was nice that he was trying to cheer you up. It was a surprisingly good day.”

Jon stabs a finger at him.

“That means nothing. You could be just some evil mind-reading - _thing_.”

The other Jon opens his mouth, and then shuts it again. He looks, inexplicably, awkward.

“Ah,” he says. “Um. Well. That’s - well. I suppose, in that case, we could go on and on with this. In that case, I would ask what interest I would have in saving Sasha, if my primary interest was working against you?”

“To ingratiate yourself with us, whoever you are,” Jon shoots back instantly. “I mean, it’s worked - the rest of them trust you already.”

The other Jon simply regards him for a moment.

“How do you feel since you’ve gotten back today?” he asks, in a surprisingly gentle voice.

As he asks, Jon finally notices it: like some immense pressure lifted off his shoulders, one that he didn’t even realise was weighing on him. It’s difficult for him to conceive of the scope of it, now he's outside it, the way it had been pressing into every part of his life. Growing, even, over the past few months, the further away he’s gotten from Tim and Sasha. How uncomfortable it made even his tenuous trust in Martin feel.

He frowns.

“The thing that took Sasha was hurting you,” the other Jon tells him. “All of you. If left unchecked, it would have turned you against the rest of them - did a lot of damage already, if I’m not mistaken. If I was interested in hurting all of you, I would have simply let it be.”

“I have only your word on that,” Jon tells him again, but it doesn’t sound as damning as this time.

“You don’t have to trust me right now,” the other Jon tells him. “I hope that will come in time. I’d like to work with you to protect you from some of the things that are coming down the line -“

“Like what?” Jon asks suspiciously.

“Things that you might go out and seek unprepared, for starters,” the other Jon tells him, a little wryly. “The Cult of the Lightless Flame, or individuals like Mike Crew. But there are also things coming for you that you won’t be able to avoid without my assistance, like Nikola Orsinov’s plan, and a plot that Jonah Magnus is hatching to have you attacked by Jared Hopworth and a contingent of the Flesh.”

“And that’s another thing,” Jon says, grimacing, “You’re telling me that Elias - _Elias_ \- is Jonah Magnus. _Elias._ I don’t believe him capable of anything more than menacing budgetary spreadsheets.”

“Oh, if you’ll believe me on nothing else, believe me on that,” the other Jon tells him. “He killed Getrude Robinson; he refused to pull the fire suppressant on you or Tim until you had been thoroughly - well, I trust you don’t need reminding of Jane Prentiss. He is actively working at this moment to either send you out into danger, or to invite it here to you and your colleagues. Friends. Trust me, he poses - or, posed, I suppose - a threat to you greater than anything else I’ve told you about.”

“If he’s so dangerous to me, then what could _you_ possibly do against him?” Jon says, but the other Jon just smiles a slightly ironic smile.

“Well, I’m not you. He’s not dangerous to me now,” the other Jon says, and the worst part about it is that there isn’t an inch of a brag in it. If anything, it sounds - self deprecating. “I, uh. Know a lot, and have some rather unique abilities in that regard. You can consider him neutralised, for now. I can help you figure out what to do with him going forwards.”

Jon cannot think of another single refutation to bring to this conversation - and, he thinks, if he could, he doesn’t think he could handle another reasoned argument against every argument he is bringing. 

“I - I need some time,” he says instead, quietly. He pinches the bridge of his nose. “I’m sorry, I don’t -“

“I understand,” the other Jon tells him, voice disarmingly gentle again. “This is a lot more all at once than I experienced, but please believe me that you wouldn’t much like the alternative.”

“I don’t trust you,” Jon insists again, weakly.

“Like I said, you don’t have to yet,” the other Jon tells him, and he sounds dryly amused. “But with your permission - you can think of it as exchange for my help with Sasha, if that makes it easier, although I’d prefer to not to think of her in such terms - I’d like access to your Archives, and maybe some help from your assistants, on occasion. Sasha I think would be most useful to me, if you can spare her, but I may need Tim occasionally, also.”

“Not Martin?” Jon says sarcastically, looking up - and then immediately feels guilty for falling back on that kind of childish spite in a stressful situation. He has, he thinks, been trying to be better where Martin is concerned, especially where he can’t really convince himself he actually believes it anymore: not when he’s actually been closest to Martin, out of everyone, over the past few horrible months - and putting that thought into words makes him feel even _worse_ about his words.

But it doesn’t land regardless: instead, a small flinch crosses his other self’s face, so fast Jon’s not sure if he imagined it.

“Oh, that is one more thing,” the other Jon says evenly. “Martin?”

“Oh, god,” Jon says tiredly, a pang in his chest that’s deeper than it should be. He tips his head back briefly in despair. “Not _Martin_? I suppose he’s, what - a werewolf, perhaps? Working for the spiders? Replaced by _worms?_ ”

“Nothing like that,” the other Jon tells him, and for the first time since meeting him, Jon thinks he seems like just another, regular person - simply tired. He looks away at the floor for a moment, and then back at Jon. “It’s just - I know that you think, sometimes, about the little freckle at the corner of his mouth. But there’s nothing wrong with that, and it’s also not his fault. So perhaps think about why, exactly, you’ve been taking it out on him.”

Jon finds himself completely floored. This is, at the same time, the last possible thing he expected to hear, the most compelling thing this Jon has yet said to convince him of his identity, and also the last and most final thing he thinks that he can possibly deal with right now. He doesn’t say anything. He doesn’t know what he _could_ say.

“Well, I’d like to start as soon as possible,” the other Jon is telling him. “I’d like to explain things to the rest of them, and then I can set up a desk somewhere out of the way. You’re free to continue to work, but for obvious reasons, I’d like to know when the, uh, unconventional statements come through, and I’ll draw you up a list of statement givers to watch out for. Oh - nobody’s staying in Document Storage at the moment, correct?”

“No,” Jon just says, and sits down at his desk very heavily.

“That’s fine,” the other Jon tells him, in a voice that sounds equal parts amused and sympathetic. He stretches and begins to move off. “I’ll have a chat with the others, and go and set myself up.”

“You, uh - you won’t tell him, will you?” Jon says, stupidly, seized by a sudden fear. “Martin?”

“No,” the other Jon tells him simply, pausing by the door. “I won’t. Well, I’ve got a lot to get started on. Looking forward to working with you, I suppose.”

* * *

  
  


It’s strange how fast it becomes normal, Sasha thinks: just her, her complicated issues with identity, her best friend who’d forgotten her, her nice coworker and her boss who’d also forgotten her, and her boss’s future double.

It’s much, much better than living inside a monster who’s wearing her like a coat, of course, but still not something she can find herself wrapping her head around easily; even if she wasn’t still coming off six months inside the head of her doppelganger. 

She tells Tim once that she’s gonna sell it to the BBC - their supernatural archive sitcom, The IT Crowd but for files and monsters - and he snort-laughs in a way that she loves to hear again. Loves to have been the cause of. 

She likes doing things like that a lot, now - watching what she does change things around her, a reminder that she _is_ still here and still her, and does still exist. After everything, that constant shadow of doubt is something she finds herself just having to learn to live with: what if, at any moment, she isn’t here again? What if someone else has taken her over again, and she’s just stuck scrabbling at the walls of a mind that doesn’t belong to her?

So Tim helps take her through moments like that - the facts of things that she did of her own volition, _just_ her, the ways that she has undeniably impacted the world around her - to remind her of her own existence and free will.

The other Jon situation doesn’t help. Seeing someone at once so familiar and so strange is difficult for a long time - especially when she has to watch him interact with their Jon - but eventually, his obvious benignancy does start to wear in. 

He’s nice about it, at least. He gives her a lot of time before he starts asking her for assistance in going through files and doing research, and he seems to take to her and Tim just as well as normal Jon does, if not better. When it comes to her more difficult days, he’s patient and understanding - “I understand, if anyone else does,” he tells her one day, “the effects these things can have. If there’s anything I can do, please just say.” He doesn’t explain then, but Sasha’s seen his scars the same as the others. She thinks she can extrapolate from there.

But Tim admits once that he doesn’t like the way that the other Jon looks at him sometimes, and Sasha has to confess that she agrees: like he’s looking right at them and still seeing a ghost. She thinks, privately, that it’s uncomfortable to be grieved when she’s still alive.

What neither of them talk about is _why_ he looks at them like this. Sasha thinks that Tim, like her, tries to remember as little as possible what the other Jon had told them about their alternate selves. Sasha especially thinks she doesn’t need to be caught up considering _another_ version of herself. But it does help to remember when the mournful looks start grating on her: that they’re only still here because of him.

She deals with him better than some, at least: Jon and Martin both end up mostly staying out of his way. After the first few days of hesitant, eager helpfulness, Martin seems to sense that the other Jon just won’t be comfortable with him, despite his attempts at strained politeness. It makes it all easier for the rest of them in the office when Martin stops trying - and even more so when the hurt, confused look finally leaves his face a few weeks in. 

And Jon doesn’t seem to know what to do with his new arrival at all. Which is fair, Sasha thinks. She doesn’t know how she would react in his position, if she were him - her own recent doppelganger experiences aside. Especially when the other Jon is so markedly… different.

She doesn’t think the other Jon realises quite how much softer and sadder he is than his counterpart, in a way that sometimes makes her feel guilty for the comparison. It softens the corners of the archive, though: she thinks most of the potential problems of their unique situation - their understandable disbelief about who he is, the huge and terrifying conclusions he draws for them about what they're all working on, their Jon's knee-jerk abrasiveness to a newcomer so profoundly disarming - are largely defanged by the kind of quiet, melancholic gravity the other Jon carries with him.

So within their little, messy space, they work it out. She and Tim have each other, like they always have, and even before Prentiss’ attack, Jon had mostly stopped his not-very-covert and mostly undeserved criticism of Martin: now with their new arrival and the invisible lines that this has drawn in the office, they seem to actually be close. Sasha doesn't know when or how they got so easy with each other, but she can see glimpses of actual, unfettered fondness when she runs across Jon eating with him in his office or chatting together when she gets in in the morning. Tim swears he’d heard Jon actually, audibly laughing, a few times - but that, as Sasha tells him jokingly, is a tall tale worthy of one of their statements. 

However it’s working out, Sasha’s pleased that he at least has someone: especially where the other Jon so often borrows her or Tim for whatever it is that he’s working on. She feels guilty about helping him sometimes - like taking sides, especially where the two Jons seem to exist in something of a respectful but uneasy truce - but their Jon seems fine with it, in a resigned kind of way. And the other Jon is such a non-stop font of information about everything, Sasha finds it soothing to work with him, in some respects: hearing him talk about everything that’s out there helps put her own experiences into context, even if it does make it more difficult to walk down the street alone at night now. 

But all the same there are some things she feels he’s not telling them, and she doesn’t know how to ask: why he’s uncomfortable with Martin, why he can’t use his own Archives in his own time - and just that sense that she gets sometimes, that his great wealth of knowledge is from more than just his own experiences in his own timeline. 

It’s not that she thinks the other Jon is actively keeping secrets. He’d gone over the whole spiel of fears and cults and magic on that first day, and had frankly offered them the choice of whether to leave, and what it would cost. But Tim hadn’t wanted to, and Sasha has to admit, privately, that in some senses she likes it where she is - the reassurance of knowing, despite how terrifying it all is, and her own stubborn curiosity. So she stays.

And as the months pass, the other Jon goes over everything he finds in the statements openly with them, with a sometimes alarming level of candour - Jude Perry, Mike Crew, Jon Amherst, cults and houses and artifacts and avatars, until Sasha’s head is swimming with it all. It’s more like his honesty feels like it’s hiding things that are too raw for him to talk about. 

It doesn’t stop Sasha from being curious, or Tim. Every now and then they’ll put their heads together and try and reason it out from what he’s getting them to help him with, but it just builds into a picture that he’s already told them about: the fourteen or fifteen fears, their various factions and followers, and the outside agents like Salesa and Leitner and Smirke.

And the evidence of how much he wants to help them is so clear - and everything else she’s trying to wrap her head around is so much - that mostly, Sasha figures she’ll leave any serious investigation until it becomes an actual issue. If it does, whatever Jon is keeping from them.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> content warnings: none

It happens very quietly: so quietly that when the yellow door appears on the other side of the main office, Sasha is the first one to catch on. It doesn’t arrive with a bang or slam into existence in any huge way; it’s more like it’s a blank space one minute, and then the next time she looks over, inexplicably, it’s a door. Just a regular front door, painted a bright yellow, incongruous against the dull white plaster of the wall around it.

Before she can bring it to everyone’s attention, the other Jon notices.

For some reason, Sasha watches it hit him like a seismic shock. The breath leaves his body as if a physical weight: she thinks she’s never seen a person sag like that before. But he doesn’t move the entire time the door is opening – not as the handle turns, not as the door swings slowly towards them, not even when Tim notices and calls a nervous, pleasant, “Um, other boss?” over from the other side of the room.

Not until a large, tan hand wraps around and grips the doorframe. And then the other Jon slaps a hand over his mouth, even though he’s still making no noise at all that Sasha can hear. He’s shaking.

Martin steps out.

Or at least Sasha thinks he does: but he’s older, and carries himself differently, with a shock of soft grey hair instead of his regular black.

Sasha’s already turning to the other side of the room, to where _their_ Martin is frozen mid-file at Jon’s desk. Jon, still seated next to him, looks similarly staggered. And then back to the yellow doorway, where the other Martin is, rubbing his eyes as if trying to adjust.

The other Jon still hasn’t moved an inch. He’s got one hand pushed against his mouth and his eyes are wide and unblinking, like he’s afraid if he moves or looks away, what’s in front of him will disappear. 

“Jon?” the other Martin says, squinting towards the desk where Jon and Martin are still poised over the drawers. “Wait, I – that’s – oh my god? Oh my _god?_ It _worked?”_

“Tim,” he breathes delightedly, scanning the room, and then “o-ooh, oh _”,_ as his eyes sweep across her - and then finally, his gaze alights on the other Jon.

“Oh! Jon,” he says, in a kind of easy, familiar softness, and that’s somehow the most surprising part of it all. He straightens up. “There you are.”

The other Jon takes one step towards him, and then another, and then he’s running awkwardly for a few short bounds until he hits the other Martin midstride, arms wide, knocking him back a step.

“Woah, hang on, it’s just me,” the other Martin says, but his hand goes gently to the back of the other Jon’s head. “Wanna make sure I’m behind you next time you go through a mysterious door in the hallways of an eldritch fear? Took me bloody ages to get it back open again, thought I’d lost you for a minute.”

“It’s been four months, actually,” the other Jon tells him, very reasonably. His hands are fisted in the fabric of Martin’s jumper. His voice is only a tone or two too high, and barely wobbles at all, to start with. “I thought that you’d died. I thought that you’d gotten lost, and you’d died, and it was my fault, and I was never going to see you again or even tell anyone about you and I’d be stuck here, just – just – I thought you’d _died._ ”

“ _Fuck_ off,” the other Martin tells him, eyes opening wide. “That’s not funny, Jon.”

“No. It wasn’t,” the other Jon says, and soundly kisses him.

Astounded, Sasha absolutely cannot restrain herself from turning to see what this does to Jon and Martin: both of them look like they’ve been punched in the stomach. Martin is positively grey. 

Behind her, Tim is letting out a series of noises akin to a whistling kettle; Sasha thinks she knows the feeling, delight colliding with shock colliding with scandal in her chest. But one glimpse back at the look on the other Jon’s face, and she does feel guilty that she’s getting so much joy out of this – he doesn’t even look happy as much as he looks upset, almost winded. He still can’t seem to take his eyes off the other Martin.

The other Martin folds his arms around him and tucks him close.

“Sorry,” he tells the other Jon, who buries his face even further into the other Martin’s shoulder. “I really am, I didn’t mean to fall behind. It’s okay, though, it’s okay, we’re – well, we’re back together now. You can tell me about it later, okay? And I mean, it’s not like you were alone. Apparently.”

From the look on the other Jon’s face when he turns to survey the rest of them, Sasha is entirely sure he’d forgotten they ever had an audience.

“Of course,” he says, tugging one of the other Martin’s arms over his shoulder. “Yes. Um. To be honest, I don’t really know what to do here. I mean technically, you all know each other, but should I – introductions?”

“Don’t be stupid,” the other Martin says fondly. He circles an arm around the other Jon’s chest in a quick press, kisses the side of his head. “Back in a sec.”

Tim is grinning ear to ear when the other Martin approaches him, and plants his hands on Martin’s arms for a kiss on the cheek without hesitation.

“Tim,” the other Martin greets him, all fondness. “God. It’s _so_ good to see you. How’re you doing?”

“Fan- _tas-_ tic,” Tim tells him unabashedly. “Absolutely fantastic. How’re things with you? Great hair, by the way. Really suits you.”

“Thanks,” the other Martin tells him, also grinning. “You don’t want to know how I got it. Jon not been causing you too much trouble, right?”

“Nothing we can’t handle,” Tim tells him delightedly, grinning even wider. “No problem at all, really.” 

When Martin turns to her, the easy smile slides right off his face. He really seems to be trying, but can’t look her in the eye for more than a second: Sasha recognises that look, and wraps her hands over her arms uncertainly. 

“Uh, Tim,” she says, and Tim moves readily enough to take her hand, grounding her. She focuses on the solid pressure of his fingers pressing back into hers, and takes a second to steady herself with it before he speaks.

“It’s okay,” she tells the other Martin, who’s fixedly keeping her eyes on free hand, which seems to be as much as he can do at the moment. “It will wear off, it did for the others. It’s alright - it happened to everyone else, even your Jon. You won’t remember all of it, but some of it will come back.”

“I remember the parts of you that matter,” the other Martin tells her, without any hesitation. “Just - just give me a minute, okay?”

Then he drags his eyes up to her face, and grins at her again. It doesn’t look easy, but it feels a little like the ground is more solid under his feet again. More so when he steps forward to grab her up into her own hug, and she can measure herself by the boundaries of his broad, reassuring arms around her and the way he leans into her shoulder.

“Sasha,” he says again warmly, pulling back, and this time there’s no strain at all when he smiles at her.

Sasha isn’t imagining the twinkle in his eye grow when he finally turns to face Jon and Martin.

Jon doesn’t say anything, just staring at the other Martin: honestly, Sasha’s not sure if he’ll ever speak again. But then he grins in something that looks a little like stunned defeat, and sticks his hands in his pockets.

“Martin,” he says, with a hint of chagrin, and the other Martin grins back and claps him gently on the arm.

Martin doesn’t say anything, when the other Martin turns to him: Sasha watches him dart a very tiny glance towards the other Jon, still standing in space and touching his shoulder where the other Martin’s arm had just been.

“Um?” Martin says. His voice is very high. “Hello? I guess.”

“ _God_ this is weird,” the other Martin tells him, with feeling. “Hey. Has Jon been doing this the whole time? Oh, nice jumper. I always loved that one.”

“You don’t still have it?” Martin squeaks, and then winces. “Sorry, of all the _stupid_ questions –“

“Stolen. By who, I’m afraid I can’t say. I’ve been sworn to secrecy,” the other Martin tells him gravely, planting his hands on his hips. Behind him, the other Jon makes a small indignant noise.

Jon makes a quiet noise like he’s choking: Martin flushes even further.

“Sorry,” the other Martin tells their Jon, with a little grin that suggests that he isn’t, at all. “I get this must be a bit weird for you. Jon never would tell me when he started liking me, you know. I suppose you won’t either?”

“Shut up, Martin,” the other Jon says, in a worn, fond voice. “Don’t tease him.”

“I’m enjoying being the all-knowing one for once,” the other Martin tells him. “Don’t be a spoilsport.”

“ _They’re insufferable_ ,” Tim hisses quietly in her ear, gripping her hand again. A predictable kind of glee is infusing his voice. “Honestly, Sasha. Did you _ever_ imagine. Jon and _Martin._ And they’re _terrible._ ”

When Sasha steals a glance back at them, the other Martin is ambling back over to lean into the other Jon.

“You’re enjoying yourself,” the other Jon accuses him, but he’s got his hands cupped around the other Martin’s face, and he doesn’t seem like he wants to let go anytime soon.

“Good?” the other Martin asks, a hint of amusement in his voice.

“I am now,” the other Jon tells him, all naked honesty.

The other Martin hums.

“Sap,” he says, but he doesn’t seem disappointed about it at all.

* * *

Jon, in a continuing state of gentle, stunned numbness, decides to bide his time. He sits through all the reunions and bright conversations, and waits until the other Martin is firmly ensconced in a conversation with Tim and Sasha, and the other Jon is completely distracted - quietly watching him from a perch by the wall, looking - for the first time that Jon has seen - entirely contented. 

As much as possible, Jon doesn’t look at the other Martin: instead he steals up quietly beside his counterpart, and clears his throat.

“I need to speak to you,” he says, and he doesn’t think he’s entirely successful at keeping the hint of agitation from his voice. “Now.”

“Ah,” the other Jon says, with a hint of chagrin. He grimaces. “I suppose - yes.”

Silently, Jon waves him into his office, and waits until the door is tightly shut before he rounds on him.

“You did _not_ tell me about - _that_ ,” he hisses, pointing to the door. “You - you _told_ me that Martin was dead, like Tim and Sasha were. You said, when you arrived, that you’d told me everything I needed to know - except that apparently another one of your - your contingent, would _step out of a door in the wall,_ and - what else haven’t you been telling me about? Are you hiding anything else from me?”

“It wasn’t any of your business,” the other Jon snaps, but he sounds a little guilty. Then his voice softens, slightly. “I didn’t actually know, you know. And I wasn’t _hiding_ anything - I would have told you if you’d asked. But if you didn’t have to know. I didn’t want you to have to bear it. I mean yes, there are some things I haven’t told you - but truly, look at me. It was so much for you already, so where was I supposed to even start?”

“So there _are_ other things that you haven’t been telling me about,” Jon says wildly, and the other Jon sighs.

“Yes,” he says. “Of course. But if you didn’t have to know - I don’t mean to be patronising, but I suppose - I didn’t know how you would handle it. If possible really didn’t want you to have to.”

“Well, it’s not like I knew _nothing,_ either. I’m not - unblemished,” Jon snaps, grimacing as he gestures to the small, messy scars visible on his face and hands, but the other Jon lets out a quiet, derisive huff. “ _What_?”

“Worms,” the other Jon says, pointing at his own scars, and then, “Hunter,” pointing at his neck, and then in quick succession, “Spiral, Desolation, Slaughter, Flesh -“

“ _Flesh?_ ” Jon says, and then sees where the scar is positioned, as the other Jon adjusts his jumper - on his lower chest, inches away from his heart and lungs, and he balks further. “ _What?_ What did that to you?”

“Um,” the other Jon continues, tapping his mouth contemplatively. “I think that’s all the ones you can see. Spider, but you already had that one. Stranger - don’t ask - Buried - also, you don’t want to ask - Dark, Lonely, Vast. God. Hang on, Death. I’m sure I’m still missing one.”

And then he cocks his head to the side with a gentle sound of static, and rolls his eyes.

“Oh, of course,” he says. “The Eye.”

Jon is staring at him. This is, he thinks, beyond anything he expected when he’d pulled the other Jon in here - just the feeling rising in the room right now, that watched feeling he always gets down here, only magnified to an intense, heavy point - and it’s coming from _him,_ he thinks, from this future _him._

“ _What_ are you,” he says, voice full of a horror he doesn’t try to restrain.

“I’m not a what,” the other Jon tells him, in a surprisingly quiet, hurt voice. “I didn’t choose any of this. I did my best just like you would have. And I hurt, a lot, because of it.”

“Sorry, I just - are you even still human?” Jon asks him without thinking, and the other Jon flinches. “S-sorry.”

“I choose to be,” the other Jon says, quietly. “As much as I can be. That’s all I can do. And I didn’t come here for this - I was looking for a way to save my own world -“

“ - your _world_ -“

“But what matters is that while I’m here, and while I can help, I’m not going to let the same thing happen to you.”

“Why?” Jon asks him blankly. “If your whole world is on the line, why would you care about what happens to me?”

“You don’t deserve it,” the other Jon tells him, with an effort that seems drawn up from somewhere very deep inside of him. “Neither did I. And I can’t promise I’ll be able to explain everything - there are some things I still don’t know - nor can I protect you from everything. But I will do my best by you, I swear. I am sorry I never told you - you know, we have a bad habit of this.”

“What did you mean when you said your _world?_ What is happening where you came from?” Jon asks, and the other Jon closes his eyes for a long moment and then shakes his head, as if dislodging a painful thought.

“I’m afraid it’s a very long and extremely uncomfortable story,” the other Jon tells him, slowly - and the strange thing is that it doesn’t sound like a brush-off, even if it is. He sounds honestly regretful about it. “As is what happened to me. I - I am sorry, I will tell you, I’ll explain everything this time - perhaps tomorrow, but. Uh. It really is very complicated to explain, and I have some, um, pressing business to get to right now. If you won’t mind excusing me. Just for today. Please.”

It takes a few seconds for that to sink in - the reason why he’d pulled his other self aside in the first place, and he’d completely forgotten - and then Jon feels his own cheeks start to heat up.

“Of course,” he says stiffly. “Yes, I’d imagine you - well. Yes.”

“Thank you,” the other Jon tells him, and he really does sound grateful. “I appreciate it. I do promise to explain everything tomorrow, I just - well. I have some catching up to do, I think.”

Jon watches him go, until he opens the door again and Jon sees that soft look slip back across his face. And then, without meaning to, he finds himself blurting:

“Wait - but why _didn’t_ you tell me about him? You know. That you were - _like that._ From the way you were avoiding him, I thought - I didn’t know what to think. But you were -”

The other Jon pauses with his hand on the doorframe, still looking out into the room beyond. Then he closes the door again quietly and sighs.

“I remember how I felt about him, when I first started here. And I know how I feel about him now. What I thought you might say - when he didn’t follow me through, I thought he was dead. Imagine sharing the grief of someone you - well. I especially didn’t want _your_ opinion on it. I wanted to keep him to myself, just a little bit longer.”

That’s all completely understandable, in a way that Jon, churlish, didn’t really want it to be.

“God. I don’t know what I’m going to do with him now,” he admits, looking at his own hands, and then back up at the other Jon again. “Maybe it’s stupid, in the middle of all this, but -“

“He’s always been on my mind more than he really should be,” the other Jon says, with a little, wry grin. “Even when I thought I was just irritated. But - you know, it doesn’t have to be the same for you. I should think he’s still a different person from my Martin..”

“Your Martin,” Jon repeats without meaning to, and the other Jon raises his eyebrows.

“Yes,” he says, pointedly and rather smugly. “ _My_ Martin. Still, you want a little free advice that’s not about - eldritch horrors, and the like?”

“When you put it like that, how can I refuse,” Jon deadpans, and the other Jon laughs.

“He’s a good man,” he says, and Jon thinks he can hear how hard he’s trying to keep his own feelings from colouring his tone. “Steady. Persistent, loyal. Kind, but he doesn’t hold back his own opinions, if you can get him to trust you. Feel however you want about him, but he’s a good person to have in your life, regardless of what you want that to look like. Because you - you’re allowed that kind of comfort, you know.”

That hurts in a way Jon wasn’t expecting, and doesn’t know how to put words on. He balls his hands into fists where he’s standing.

“If - if I ever -“ he tries, and then he gives up and lets the other Jon fill in the blanks for himself. “How will I know it’s really real, or just something I think I should feel, because you do?”

“If you don’t feel anything, why does it matter to you so much?” the other Jon asks him. When Jon can’t bring himself to respond, he continues gently, “Well then. Isn’t that something of an answer?”

“Maybe - maybe,” Jon tells him, knuckling a fist against his temple. “Maybe I did - do - like him. You were right, before, he’s always - discomforted me, only I never thought to look too hard at it until recently, it’s just now -“

“You wanted a chance to find it out for yourself, and now that you feel like it’s been decided for you, you’re reluctant to want to?”

“How -“ Jon starts, before the other Jon cuts across him.

“Because that’s exactly how I’d feel, I imagine,” the other Jon tells him, with a touch of asperity. “I never have enjoyed doing what I’m told. But please remember that Martin and I - well, us showing up doesn’t mean you definitely _will_ , or that you absolutely _have_ to. But it also doesn’t mean you definitely _can’t_. You have as much choice as you always did.”

“I don’t know if that helps,” Jon tells him honestly, and the other Jon gives him a little, commiserative smile.

“I am sorry that we might have messed things up for you,” he says, and he does sound rueful. “I have tried to be as impartial as I can, but you’re probably aware of my feelings on this already. How I hope it works out for the two of you.”

“...Yes,” Jon says, a little dryly, and the other Jon laughs. “Thanks for admitting it, though.”

“Don’t blame me for wanting you to be happy,” he says. “It’s in my own self-interest. Arguably.”

“And you are? Happy?” Jon asks, despite himself.

“With him?” the other Jon says, and his voice is gentler than Jon knew he could still sound. “Yes. Decidedly so.”


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> content warnings: none

Martin doesn’t know how to begin to process all of this. So he doesn’t.

His average day now looks like this: he comes into work in the morning, runs into the other Martin bickering pyjama-clad with the other Jon, and leaves immediately for the staff room. When he judges it safe to come back down, he works without break until twelve, when the other Martin wanders over briefly and makes some offhand, amused comment about remembering that case and it being a complete waste of time, and ambles off again. Lunchtime he eats alone, trying not to think of what his Jon’s doing now he can’t stand Martin’s presence long enough to sit with him anymore, and goes back to work pretending he doesn’t feel Tim and Sasha’s eyes on him. Then at the end of the day, he carries his apparently useless research through and drops it on Jon’s desk, who doesn’t look at him once, and then he goes back to his own desk, avoiding eye contact with the other Jon, who’s watching him guiltily from the door to Doc Storage. He leaves without saying goodbye to any of them.

It’s all a complete mess, and he hates every bit of it. The worst part is that really, he should be happy: he’s not unaware of where his own feelings for Jon are heading - where they started, if he’s being entirely honest. This is something he’s wanted, for a long time now. And now the evidence for it being feasible, tangible - it’s right here in front of him. It worked out. And it worked well, if the way he sees the other Jon watch the other Martin is anything to go by, especially when he thinks nobody is looking. 

But he’s not happy. It’s not easy. He doesn’t feel like he’s gained anything: it just feels like he’s lost Jon. And Tim and Sasha too, to some extent, since he doesn’t think any of them know how to deal with the other him, any more than they knew how to deal with the other Jon.

And if he’s entirely honest, neither does he. Because the real, awful truth is that he really doesn’t like what he sees when he looks at his future self. Martin’s the first person to admit that he’ll wear politeness like an armour, and maybe he could stand to loosen up a bit - but this other him is impatient and snappy, bordering on callous sometimes, in a way he rarely lets himself be. 

It physically hurts Martin to watch, sometimes, the careless way the other him interacts with Jon - how much he wants what they have, and how little the other him seems to care, or even notice. It’s excruciating. Like every thought he’s ever buried about how he isn’t good enough for Jon walked out of the Archive wall and came alive in front of him.

And of course, the other worst part is that if there was anyone he’d think to talk to about all of the whole mess of it - God, he thinks. It’s tragic, it’s _so_ stupid, but his first instinct is to want to tell Jon. Not the other Jon. His Jon. After all these months of lunch together and drinks after work, and those late night, early morning archive talks - just opening up to each other, inch by excruciating inch - this feels like having the floor ripped away from him. And the irony of it all: that their closeness, in a way, did this to them.

There’s a part of him that thinks he can’t blame Jon for avoiding him, really. After all, he doesn’t know what he’d say to Jon even if Jon would listen. But it hurts to know that Jon’s not even willing to try.

He’s pretending it’s not building: coming in every day, feeling the weight of Jon not knowing what to do with him, watching the other Martin confidently blustering in a way he doesn’t know or recognise all, watching him brush off Jon’s fondness like it doesn’t even matter. 

So he’s constantly on the edge of distracted - brooding - and maybe that’s why it scares more than it should when he pushes into Document Storage one day at eight in the morning, and a looming figure sits up out of the darkness.

“Huh?” a very familiar voice says in a voice thick with sleep, as Martin clutches his chest in receding panic; and then, “Oh - it’s you.”

“S-sorry,” Martin tells the other Martin, backing towards the door. The lights are still off, so he can only just make out the shape of his other self, blearily rubbing at his eyes. “I forgot - I can wait until later, if you like.”

“It’s okay,” the other Martin says, and he’s already sitting up and leaning against the concrete wall of the room. There’s a shift in the covers around his legs, and Martin realises that part of what he’d taken to be blankets is the other Jon’s loose hair: when he looks closer, he can see a thin, scarred arm flung lazily over the other Martin’s hip.

That, he thinks, in something a little like despair, is _never_ going to stop being weird.

“I’m already awake, and Jon can sleep through anything – once he finally gets to sleep. You’re in early.”

“I like being up early,” Martin tells him, tightly. He can’t really stop staring at the pile of them, now the darkness gives him freedom to do so: Martin’s hand playing with a loose strand of Jon’s hair, Jon’s face barely visible where it’s pressed into Martin’s side. “I got used to it when I was staying here. But I guess you’d know that. And your – um, _that_ Jon doesn’t usually mind me popping in here if he’s sleeping, or whatever.”

“Oh, yeah,” Martin says breezily. “God, I remember that. Early mornings felt like the only time of day I ever really felt relaxed around here, nobody around. Or, I mean, nobody except for Jon, I guess, but he was -“

“Don’t -“ Martin warns him quietly, and he can feel it brewing up inside him, threatening to overwhelm him. “Don’t do any of that, please. I - I’m not just a memory of you. I’m a person - and I do _not_ want to talk about him.”

“I mean, maybe, but you _are_ a younger version of me, so in a sense -“ the other Martin starts in a tone that’s probably supposed to be teasing, but Martin cuts him off instantly.

“No, I’m not,” he says flatly. “I mean, yeah, obviously at some point we _were_ the same person, but we’re not anymore. So I’d appreciate less of the loftier-than-thou, thanks. Maybe it’s difficult for you - I don’t know where you’ve been or why you’re all - apocalypse chic, but we can’t all be Jean Claude Van Blackwood, and that’s alright.”

“You really don’t like me, do you?” the other Martin asks him curiously, and this isn’t an opinion that Martin feels any compunctions about sharing.

“No,” he says, tightening his hands on the papers he’s holding. “I don’t, actually. I mean, not that that’s a great loss for you, I’d imagine - clearly you’ve got a lot going for you, apparently, according to J--“

He shuts his mouth instantly, but it’s too late. He hears the rest of that word fall as if audible into the ringing silence, and he thinks the other Martin must, too, because he’s drawing in a breath to speak.

“Are you - jealous?” he asks Martin incredulously, and Martin feels himself instantly bristle even further.

“No!” he says immediately, kicking half-heartedly at the edge of a filing cabinet - and then realises the volume of his voice, and gives up on pretending it was a believable lie. “Okay, well. Fine! Maybe. 

“But it’s not all about him, you know. Ever since you’ve gotten here you’ve treated me like some - some cast-off you. I’m my own self, dickhead. I’m a different person from you, I’ve done different things, seen different things. I’m not just some - shadow of you you can treat like a trip down memory lane.”

The other Martin tries speaking here, but this has been building inside Martin for days now and he’s really hitting his stride, so he blows right past the other him without waiting.

“And yeah, okay, it _is_ about him a little but, not what you’d think. You clearly have no idea - five months ago, Jon didn’t even like me. Barely even saw me. But the way _he_ looks at _you -_ what I would do for someone to look at me like that, and you don’t even seem to _care_ about him.”

The other Martin looks suitably, if a little insincerely, penitent throughout all of this - right up until the last sentence, where the self-assurance slips away from his face by just a fraction. He shakes his head a little, and frowns. 

For the first time Martin’s seen since his arrival, he looks - just a little - uncomfortable.

“You - well, _obviously_ I care,” he says. Martin can hear the defensiveness undermining the scorn in his voice clear as day, and instantly knows he’s hit a nerve. “I mean, you’re me, _you_ know -“

“It really doesn’t look like it,” Martin shoots back at him, with the growing, vicious pleasure of being sure he’s digging the knife in. “It looks like you gained all that confidence, and lost the ability to give a shit. What happened, hmm?”

“It’s not _like_ that, it’s - _complicated_ ,” the other Martin says, and he seems to be getting riled up now. Relentlessly, Martin chases it.

“Oh?” he says, no longer trying to keep his voice quiet. “Complicated how? Complicated like you finally have someone who loves you back, and you can’t even be bothered to respond half the time? Because that’s what it looks like. Do you even remember what it’s _like_ -“

“Jesus, stop! It’s not like that!” the other Martin hisses, shifting, and then quiets his voice to a whisper when the other Jon stirs. “It’s not like that, it - it’s different. He’s not perfect either, and it matters that I can be honest with him and I don’t have to be nice all the time, he - he likes that, he cares about that. Neither of us are the same people as you and _him_ , you know - you have no idea what’s happened to us. To me. And -“

“And?” Martin prompts, and then when the other Martin still doesn’t continue, “ _And_?”

“You have no idea,” the other Martin says again, after a deep breath. Only this time everything’s dropped out of his voice: volume, tone, inflection. What’s left is a hauntingly quiet kind of fatalism. “What it’s like to get everything you wanted, only to know you’re going to lose it.”

He only looks down at the other Jon for a second before he squeezes his eyes closed. 

“I don’t know how much of what he’s told you about what’s happened to us. What we’re trying to do. But it doesn’t look good for us - I mean, for anyone, but especially for him. I - if, when I lose him, _again_ \- I’ve been trying not to think about it. I don’t know what that would do to me. I don’t know.”

“Maybe I think - I thought - telling myself I don’t care as much - it will make it hurt less when it happens.”

When Martin reaches for the anger that was boiling inside him just a few seconds ago, it’s disappeared entirely. All that’s left are those same old hurts. That same old loneliness. 

It’s not, he thinks, as victorious as he might have expected, to finally see those old wounds on the face of the other him, under that slick mask of confidence.

“Do you really believe that?” he asks the other Martin quietly, a question he thinks is born not so much of knowing this other Martin as it is deeply, ashamedly, knowing himself.

“No,” the other Martin admits, no hesitation. He tips back his head, eyes still closed. “Not really. But it makes it hurt less now, not to think about it. I - honestly, I don’t know how else I’d bear it, otherwise.”

“You - love him that much?” Martin asks, and it comes out barely audible.

“Enough that sometimes it scares me,” the other Martin says quietly, and he opens his eyes and looks down at the other Jon’s face, hidden in the locks of his messy hair. Even from here, Martin can see the rise and fall of his chest, pillowed against the other Martin’s leg, and he feels an exquisitely painful pang thinking of Jon. The tiny, infrequent ways they’ve touched. How little it resembles this.

“Do you remember when we first saw him?” the other Martin says, and his voice is scraped thin now. “I remember thinking _shit, his eyes are beautiful._ God, it was corny. And then he opened his mouth and I instantly told myself to forget it, I was not gonna make a fool of myself for someone so - unreasonable. Even if they looked the way he did. You remember?”

He laughs. Martin can only nod.

“Stupid _._ Obviously _._ Stupider because he’s not really what I thought at all, he’s so much -” here, he breaks off. Martin watches his throat work as he swallows, and feels the ghost of that lump in his own throat. “Anyway. I think you can see that in him by now, or you’re starting to. But you know, sometimes I just look at him and I - god, he still catches me the same way he did when I first saw him. We never really stood a chance.”

Martin brushes a hand across his face under his glasses. He thinks the other Martin does too. For a while, neither of them says a word.

“I could have had that, but I’m not going to, right?” Martin says slowly, as it occurs to him. He’s still just looking at the other Jon’s arm, flung so casually across the other Martin’s legs, and he doesn’t even seem to have noticed. The realisation doesn’t hurt as much as Martin might have thought: it’s cold and blank and settles slowly, like a covering of snow. 

The other Martin is suspiciously quiet. Martin wonders when, exactly, when his other had worked that out for himself.

“I’m not naive enough to think that this - you two, showing up - is some kind of, I don’t know, cosmic blessing. Because everything you just said - that’s what would have happened if you guys hadn’t arrived, right? But Jon knows. I know. So things are gonna be different now. They have to be.”

“Well, yeah,” the other Martin tells him calmly, but Martin’s sure he can hear a thread of guilt under it. “Sasha’s alive. Tim’s going to live. And if me and Jon find what we’re looking for, we’ll tell you, and you’ll never even have to know what we’re facing. I mean - I’m sorry, and I get it, but isn’t that enough?”

“No,” Martin tells him before he can stop himself, the word rising bitter in his throat. “I wish it was, but -“

“But you’re lonely,” the other Martin says, very quietly.

“Yeah,” Martin admits, and this time when he brushes at his face, his hand comes away damp. “I mean - before, I _knew_ that this wasn’t gonna happen. Jon, I mean. I never honestly thought it would, it was just a stupid crush. But now I know that it was _definitely_ going to, and now it might not - how am I not supposed to feel like I’ve lost something?”

“Because he’s still out there. Idiot,” the other Martin tells him. He sounds exasperated again, but for the first time, it’s in a gentle kind of way that _doesn’t_ make Martin want to choke him. “Probably bumbling through the door in five minutes. Okay, yeah, things are maybe different now, but you haven’t totally lost it yet.”

Martin takes a long, shaky breath in.

“Okay. Alright. But neither have you,” he says, and the other Martin is silent for a long minute.

“Fair point,” he says. 

There’s a long minute of silence.

“You can stop pretending to be asleep now, by the way,” the other Martin says eventually, in a more matter-of-fact tone of voice.

The other Jon shifts and cracks an eye open.

“If I didn’t pretend, I’d never get to hear you say nice things about me.”

“It’s okay, I’ve been schooled about that,” the other Martin says to him, slipping into a kind of comfortable ease that makes Martin _ache_. “Thoroughly told off. As you probably heard, nosy. God, how does this keep happening? Can you believe I’ve had _another_ argument with myself?”

“Yes,” the other Jon tells him wryly, and in the dim lighting finally Martin sees on the other Martin’s face what he’s been expecting the whole time: fondness so deep it transforms his whole face, and a kind of gutting, heart-wrenching fear.

Quietly, Martin crosses the floor to grab the file he needed from a box on the opposite wall. The other two are silent the whole time, and he thinks with an intuition like knowing that his conversation with the other Martin is over, and they are kindly waiting for him to leave.

As he closes the door behind him, he catches a quiet question noise that sounds like the other Jon.

“I love you,” he hears the other Martin say, emotion thick in his throat, and then rustles, and then silence.

* * *

Jon doesn’t mean to find Martin crying in the stacks.

He doesn’t mean to find Martin, full stop. He’s been making something of a career of avoiding Martin lately; he knows that it’s a shitty thing to do, and Martin’s almost definitely noticed, but he doesn’t really know what else he _can_ do. 

He has been ignoring, very purposefully, how empty the edges of his days have been feeling lately. At least with everything the other Jon’s been telling him, he has some very convenient other excuses as to why else that might be.

“Oh - sorry,” he says automatically, turning to go, and then hears a tell-tale sniff, and wheels back around before he can stop himself. “Oh God, Martin, are you alright?”

“Yeah,” Martin says, and then immediately undermines that by wiping at his cheeks. “Honestly, it’s fine, it’s just - uh, god. Been a _morning_ already, you know.”

Jon has his hands on Martin’s arms before he can think about it - _if you don’t feel anything,_ the other Jon whispers in his head, _why do you care so much?_

 _Shut up,_ Jon tells him, and gently squeezes Martin’s arms.

“What happened?” he asks, and Martin looks baffled at him asking, a look which stings only because it’s completely warranted.

“Honestly, it’s fine, Jon,” Martin says.’“Just had a tough conversation with - well, with myself, you know? God, this is all so weird.”

“I know the feeling,” Jon tells him. He doesn’t know what else to say: he feels like he has so much pent up inside of him he might explode, but so much that doesn’t know where to even start, like he has done ever since the other Martin stepped through that door. And he’s standing far closer to Martin than he has been in days; his hands still resting on Martin’s arms, the proximity making his head swim. “I’m sorry.”

“Yeah, but I’m okay,” Martin tells him again, even as he’s reached up to cover one of Jon’s hands with a soft, warm hand of his own. His voice is quiet. “It’s alright, really.”

Because he hasn’t got a single thought left in his head that he can think to say, Jon kisses him instead.

It’s a good kiss. He hasn’t kissed anyone since Georgie, but the easy, gentle movement of it comes back immediately. After a moment of frozen stillness, Martin kisses him back, and it’s only awkward for a few moments before it’s just - easy. Nice.

It doesn’t help. Jon doesn’t know why he thought it might, because knowing that Martin is a nice kisser doesn’t make anything else about this situation easier, anymore than knowing anything else about Martin does. 

Because he’s still left with all the rest of it: his worries about what he actually wants versus what he should want, his fear that he doesn’t feel the way that he should do, a whole mess of expectations and future missteps that he doesn’t know how to reconcile.

When he breaks the kiss, Martin is looking at him with an expression Jon can’t parse. He thinks it might be happiness, and instantly feels trapped and guilty: then he thinks it might _not_ be, and feels panicked.

“Sorry,” he says, stepping back. “God, that was - I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be. I’ve had much worse,” Martin tells him awkwardly, and Jon has no idea what to do with that. He doesn’t think Martin does either - he looks like he’s sorting through a lot of things very fast, and not coming up with any real conclusions. But that’s fair, he thinks; he doesn’t really know why he’d kissed Martin, so he doesn’t expect Martin to be able to work it out.

“Still,” Jon tells him, stomach churning, “It was a shitty thing to do, I wasn’t thinking. I shouldn’t have used you like that, especially not when you were - well.”

He watches the light leave Martin’s eyes entirely, and immediately has the sensation that he’s said the wrong thing.

“It’s fine,” Martin is saying, with the kind of heavy, strained politeness that feels like a knife to the guts. “But, I mean, if it was just a - means to an end, or whatever, then next time I’d appreciate it if you found a way to sort your head out that didn’t involve bringing me into it. I’m not some kind of - stress ball, or - or, experiment, if you just saw the other two and thought that you should -“

“Oh, God no,” Jon says, horrified at how badly this has gone so fast. “No, Martin, it’s _really_ not like that. Please don’t think that I wasn’t thinking of you at all, or that I was just - acting out of some kind of expectation. I swear wasn’t trying to figure myself out as much as I was trying to figure - well, _you_ out. I think. And going about it extremely poorly. 

“I suppose I just don’t really know how much I can trust my own wants and feelings, given everything that’s happening, and I thought - well, I didn’t think. But I really am sorry.”

By the end, Martin is regarding him with an expression that he can’t place.

“Um, Jon. You know you’re not the only one trying to deal with all that, right?” Martin says, and Jon freezes.

“Wait. What?” he says, shaking his head just a fraction.

Martin waves a hand vaguely through the air. His face is slipping from a marked self-consciousness to a kind of irritated displeasure, but Jon quite doesn’t feel like it’s directed at him.

“Meeting you from the future, on this big, world-saving quest. All knowledgeable and smug. Trying to piece together what might or might not happen, because half the time he can’t even be bothered to explain.“ His voice gets quieter, fractionally. “Discovering that you have some great, epic love story that you never even _consented_ to -“

“Well, I’m sorry that the idea of being in love with me is such a trial for you,” Jon shoots at him, stung. Martin frowns further.

“Don’t be a dick, you know that’s not actually what I meant,” he says, a little edge of impatience in his voice. “It’s not about _you_ , it’s just - I don’t know, the other me comes bursting into the Archives with this great big reunion scene, and now _they’re_ joined at the hip and in the midst of this whole complicated _thing_ , and I just. I didn’t ask for it, and now it feels like there’s some big standard, I guess. That I should be getting right, and I’m not. I just figured you might understand.”

Deflating, Jon thinks about his other self: his assurance, his experience, the way he carries himself. The things he’ll say that he just assumes Jon will know about, sometimes things he can’t even describe to Jon. The complete ease in the way that he looks at the other Martin. His strange combination of natural ease and a kind of compelling gravity, even in his quiet, unobtrusive moments. How much lesser it all makes Jon feel, sometimes.

“Yes,” he says, a lot more calmly. “I rather think I do.”

“That’s all I mean,” Martin says, shrugging. “So I get it, kind of. If you’re - confused, if you’re trying to work stuff out. You’re not the only one, is all. In a weird, shitty kind of way, we’re actually in this stupid boat together.”

“I didn’t think about it like that,” Jon tells him honestly. “I’m sorry, that’s my fault. It didn’t occur to me that you might be going through the same thing.”

Martin hums a vague noise of thanks, and goes back to looking self-conscious.

It’s not enough. Jon feels it’s not enough - _I like you_ , he wants to say, _that’s why I’m so worried about this, I like you, I wanted to like you just because it’s you and not because I was supposed to_ -

And then he thinks of the other Jon, pained, admitting - _I’m sorry, I know we have a bad habit of keeping things from people, I’m trying to be better -_ how much Jon himself wants to be honest, even if it’s difficult.

“I’m, um. I’m glad that it’s you,” Jon says, which is the most that’s clear to him at the moment, but he feels a knot loosen inside his chest as he says it aloud. “I mean, perhaps it would have been easier if it were someone whom I didn’t care for at all, so I wouldn’t have to keep _thinking_ about this, but - out of anyone, I suppose I am pleased that it was you. Both to be in this mess with, and. Well. To, um, to be seeing, in, uh, _that_ capacity, I suppose.”

When he looks over, Martin is staring at him. His cheeks are dusted with red.

“I promise not to take that to heart,” he tells Jon jokingly, and the hint of self-deprecation under it makes Jon want to take an axe to every stupid thing he ever said about Martin in the first six months of knowing him.

“You can if you like,” he says bluntly. “That’s why I said it. Listen, I can’t _promise_ you anything, because I - I’m not sure, about so many things, and I don’t want to tell you anything that I can’t be sure is just me and not me thinking about those two in there. So if I can’t be sure that I mean it - really mean it, I’m not just worried, or, or - well, then I won’t say it. 

“But I will try to be as honest with you as I can, even if it’s uncomfortable - no more, um, avoiding you. Sorry. Is that okay with you?”

There’s a look of disappointment on Martin’s face that’s so slight Jon doesn’t know if he’s imagining it, but he’s nodding nonetheless. 

“Yeah,” he says. “Me too.”

And then after a moment of silence, a corner of his mouth pulls up in an awkward grin - one that makes Jon’s stomach churn in a way that he can’t quite bring himself to wish away.

“You know… in the interests of _just being us_ ,” Martin is telling him slowly, and Jon has to fight to pull his attention from Martin’s smile back to what he’s actually saying, “now you’re back to speaking to me again, I can actually think of one thing we could do that is definitely not something they’d do. Just us, no fate or destiny allowed. _If_ you think you could be interested.”

“Oh?” Jon asks, quirking an eyebrow.

Martin hunches his shoulders self-consciously.

“Do you wanna go and have a few drinks with me,” he says, and then makes a face, “ - just, just drinks, not anything else, I mean - and complain about all of this for a while? As inelegantly as possible, okay. I think we’re owed it.”

For no reason he has the energy to think of right now, the idea of it touches Jon more than he’d like to admit: like one clear, solid want he didn’t know he had, in the middle of this whole mess. Which complicates things all over again with the way that it makes him feel, the little burst of surprise and fondness and comfort in just looking at Martin looking at him, offering him a simple step forwards in the midst of all this. 

He knows there’s an involuntary smile spreading across his face; he watches Martin’s own face light up in response.

“You know what?” Jon tells him softly, but with feeling. “Actually, I think I’d love to.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 2 martins...2!! i have a LOT of complex thoughts abt pre- and post-lonely martin, mostly that they would Not get on.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> content warnings: none

The weeks after that are - it’s strange, Jon thinks, but he can’t really find the words for the exact feeling. It’s a combination of things. In some ways, things feel like they’re balanced on a knife point: the looming pressure of what the other Jon had told him about his own situation the day after the other Martin arrived - the wreck of the world, his place within it, his own struggles with humanity - the knowledge of it weighs heavy on Jon like a stone. That that’s a possible future for him is beyond the worst things that he’s let himself consider, before, and now the very real proof of it is living in his archive backroom and drinking all his tea.

And his other self had told the others as well, so now that the other Jon is able to be more open about who he is and the powers he possesses, it starts to intrude on their lives more - after a number of failed diplomacies, he openly reports destroying Jared Hopworth, for example, and there’s a dreadful two days where he and Tim and Sasha disappear to Yarmouth to neutralise Nikola Orsinov and her circus.

The exact nature of his other self’s power fascinates and terrifies Jon in equal measure - much as the rest of everything in the Archive does, he thinks, and immediately hates every implication that has - but the other Jon frankly refuses to demonstrate or extrapolate more than necessary, especially on anyone in the Archive. When asked, he tells Jon bluntly that it’s personal, and genuinely dangerous, and also none of his business.

Out of a sense of respect that he didn’t know he was capable of, Jon lets it lie and doesn’t push it, mostly. The very real debt that Jon owes him is hangs a little heavier over his head with every day that passes with Sasha and without further incident. A little peace in exchange for all his efforts so far in the continued safety and comfort of everyone working in the Archives - it seems like a fair trade, Jon thinks. Even if his burning curiosity about it keeps him up at night sometimes.

Because, on the other hand, things also feel bizarrely - comfortable. Jon hasn’t felt this happy in - well, more time than he’d like to admit, he finds. It’s like starting at the Archives again, that sense of comfortable camaraderie between himself and Tim and Sasha and Martin - and the other Jon and the other Martin, he supposes. Except this time he is, strangely, less stressed.

Supernatural horrors and the looming potentiality of an alternate apocalypse aside, it’s easier than it ever has been before. Something in the way that he doesn’t have to pretend he’s out of his depth now, that’s an expected fact - and that he doesn’t have to keep the weight of the whole Archives and its assorted mysteries on his own, solitary shoulders, not with the other Jon’s willing expertise. 

Martin also helps with that. Martin helps with that a _lot_. Without meaning to, Jon finds that he’s spending all his time with Martin again, but it’s far, far different than it was before the other Martin arrived. Instead of the soft, clandestine strains of something maybe beginning, it feels like they’re standing on the precipice of something together, just waiting to see what happens next.

And now, it’s all so much, so loud. Like the conversation they’d had had given him permission to feel everything he’d been pretending he wasn’t, the force of just how much he feels about Martin takes him by surprise. It’s almost embarrassing, like being a teenager again: constantly thinking of Martin, having to drag his thoughts away when he’s supposed to be focusing on something important - and he thinks, heart-stoppingly, that Martin might feel similar. 

As much as he can, he’s sticking to his promise to be honest with Martin, but it still feels like there’s so much left unsaid. Probably because Jon still can’t exactly be sure of his own feelings, if he’s being entirely honest with himself. It’s not that he’s not aware of the general shape of them, it’s more that the way that the other Jon looks at the other Martin is still a great pressure, and one he has to see every day - if they could have had _that,_ and he gets it wrong, and he fucks it up - 

So he wants things to stay like this: everyone he cares about safe, doing the best that he can. He likes this. It’s a strange thing, he thinks, to grow to be happy about a situation so full of dangers and future horror, but nonetheless he finds himself relaxing into it almost without meaning to. He wants it to last.

* * *

One morning he walks through the door into his office, and finds his other self sitting uncharacteristically at his desk. By the time he gets in, the other Jon is usually either still getting ready in Doc Storage, or working at the desk he'd set up for himself in the main office: he doesn't often come into Jon's office. A courtesy thing, Jon supposes, and he does have to admit it makes him feel better to have a space for himself to retreat to, sometimes.

“Morning,” Jon just says to him, accompanied by the more-and-more infrequent double take at the absurdity of this situation: himself by the door, his other self in the chair at his desk, flipping through some files. _Your average day at work_ , he thinks wryly. It’s an old joke by now.

“We’re going home tomorrow morning,” the other Jon tells him, with absolutely no warning, and Jon turns his head so fast his neck cracks. There's a tone in his other self's voice that Jon can't place. “Out of your hair. You can have your document storage back, you’ll be pleased to know.”

“You - you, uh, you _what_?” Jon says, succinctly. “God, you actually found what you came for? That’s -”

“No,” the other Jon says bluntly, and his hands shake slightly before he folds them neatly in front of him. Jon draws in a fast breath, but doesn’t interrupt him. “I - I don't think we will. All this work, and we haven't found anything. And we - Martin, he thinks we can’t stay here forever while people are suffering, back where we came from. At some point, we have to go back, and see what we can do by ourselves. This was only ever a - a faint hope.”

“Are you going to be alright?” Jon says, because he can’t think of anything else to say. He puts down the papers he’s holding and leans over against the desk.

“I don’t know,” the other Jon tells him lightly, a faint line of something heavy running underneath it. “Very possibly not. But - I’ll never know for sure, unless we go back. And Martin will never forgive either of us if we don’t. So. We just have to hope.”

“So what about - here?” Jon asks blankly. “There’s no hope for us, either? For me?”

The other Jon looks at him softly.

“Yes,” he says. “There is at least that. Like I told you, Elias - Magnus - caused what happened to our world, and I’ve done my best to make sure he won’t be a danger to you. I’ve left information for you, tapes - with everything I think might be useful, anything at all. And already you know far more than I ever did. It won’t be easy, and there will be other dangers, but you have Tim and Sasha - and - “

“Martin,” Jon finishes wryly, and the other Jon chokes out a laugh.

“Yes,” he says. “It seems you do. And so do I, thank God.”

Without thinking, Jon reaches out to put a hand briefly on top of the other Jon’s. It’s the first time he’s ever touched his other self, he realises - and it’s surprisingly grounding to feel the same worm scars under his fingers, even surrounded as they are by the swirls and whorls of the unfamiliar burn scar.

“How are you going to get back?” Jon asks him.

“How we came. Michael’s doors again,” the other Jon tells him, grimacing. “A little bit of uneasy truce with Michael, but also I had an - _encounter -_ with our Spiral, back in our world, which left me with more than a little understanding of how they work. As much as it can be understood. We should be able to open a door, and then - well, we’ll find a way.”

“Good luck,” Jon tells him, with as much earnestness as he can muster. He swallows, hard. “Truly, I -”

“Thank you,” the other Jon says, when he doesn’t continue. “And - if you should happen to find a way to sort it all out, _please_ don’t hesitate to come and find us, alright? No need to be polite, just come straight over.”

“Of course,” Jon tells him, but he thinks they both know that’s more of a pretence than a promise. The other Jon nods in accession anyway.

“Well,” he says. “Thank you, for everything. It might be - strange, to say, but it has been a pleasure to meet you.”

“And you,” Jon tells him, and means it.

* * *

It all happens horribly, unbearably fast after that: after everything that's happened, it feels like he blinks and it's the next morning and he's stood in the doorway of the main office, watching the gathered crowd. Everyone is in before him, for once, and Sasha and Tim are clustered around the opposite side of the room, talking quietly with the other Jon and Martin. Martin is a little ways off, silent and drawn, his hands fisted in the bottom of his jumper.

When Jon makes eye contact with the other Jon from across the room, they share a small, strained smile. The other Martin notices, and places a solid hand on his counterpart's shoulder, and all three of them just look at each other.

Jon doesn't know what to say: the mix of emotions in his chest deep and painful enough to be impossible to put into words. So he just crosses the room and, after a second of hesitation, hugs them both. The feeling of his own small, solid frame under his arms is something he thinks will stay with him for a long time, but when he draws back, he thinks his other self looks at least a little calmer.

Then Tim moves in for a hug of his own, and they spend the next few minutes just aimlessly talking: but Jon thinks that they're all far too aware that they're just killing time. The other Jon definitely does, if the way he gets more and more quietly agitated as the minutes pass is anything to go by.

"Are you ready?" the other Martin asks eventually, far too loud in the muted hush of the office, and the other Jon straightens his jacket a little tighter and just nods.

In front of them, the yellow door appears out of nowhere: blank wall one moment, yellow paint the next. There's no sound - it feels like there should be, Jon thinks stupidly. Like some great clap of thunder, or something, _anything_ other than this awful quiet.

For a moment, everyone just looks at it.

“Are you afraid?” the other Martin asks the other Jon quietly, and this time it's like they're the only ones in the room. Hearing him speak so softly, Jon feels almost embarrassed; like he's witnessing something achingly private.

“Yes,” the other Jon tells him, and he doesn’t sound like he’s trying to hide the lump in his voice. Jon watches a shadow of discomfort cross the other Martin’s face: but then he takes a deep breath and laces their fingers together, tugging the other Jon in close. 

Seeing them move together so gently feels like a physical ache as it never has before: Jon is acutely aware of Martin on the other side of the room, watching quietly with wide, inscrutable eyes.

“Me too,” the other Martin says softly. “But it’s alright, love. We'll do it together, okay?”

“Together,” the other Jon repeats, and opens the door.

Jon watches until long after the door fades entirely into dull white wall, and then he turns and walks back into his office.

* * *

  
  


When Sasha and Tim go quietly back to work, Martin’s still staring at Jon’s office door - as he has been since Jon walked through it and half-shut it. Behind it, he can see the vague shape of Jon, shadowed at his desk. He hadn’t liked the look on Jon’s face as he’d gone. The shape of his own fear and grief for the other Jon and Martin still sits heavy in Martin's own stomach - but something about the way Jon looked had been beyond that, he thinks. 

When he pushes open the door to Jon’s office quietly, Jon’s still just sitting quietly. He glances up at Martin, and then back down again at something on his desk: a file, covered in his own spiky writing. Behind him are boxes and boxes of tapes Martin’s not seen before, all marked up in the same script. 

Jon’s staring down at the file in front of him, almost mesmerised. The look on his face is nothing so much as it is barely concealed panic.

For a moment, Martin isn’t sure what to do: if he says something he shouldn’t, if he gets it wrong and messes things up or hurts Jon when he’s already stressed - all the same thoughts that have been going around and around in his head for weeks.

But then he thinks about the other Martin: for all that brashness, still so worried about something breaking that he never touches it at all. He’s right about some things, Martin thinks - his brazen confidence, saying what he thinks, passing up politeness for honesty where it matters, but. But now that Martin’s seen that in himself, he thinks, he knows what that looks like and where it falls down. And he finds, simply, that he doesn’t want that: to let his own fears and hesitancies get in the way of someone he cares about.

Quietly, he crosses the room to stand just on the other side of Jon’s desk.

“It’s so much,” Jon tells him after a moment, still staring down at the sheet, and Martin wonders when the very act of Jon disclosing something to him became an expression of fondness. “I used to think I was only going to be relieved when he left, but where they're going, what they're facing, I - and I didn’t realise how much I’d just assumed that he would take care of. How much I have to do myself, now to - to protect myself and everyone, the whole _world_ , what happens if I fail. I mean, just _look_ at all this, I -“

Martin takes a deep breath. He lays his hand carefully on the top of Jon’s desk, just an inch or two away from Jon’s loosely curled fist.

“Well,” he tells Jon, softly. “In that case. It’ll be good that you’ve got me, right?”

For a few moments, Jon still looks ill at ease. His brow is slightly furrowed, mouth gently pursed: like he’s in the midst of making some decision. Martin knows that look. He doesn’t speak, doesn’t move. Just lets Jon think it out: make his own choice. 

Then Jon straightens out his fingers very carefully, so the sides of them just brush against Martin’s own. 

“Yes,” he murmurs warmly. He closes his eyes for a long moment, and then he meets Martin’s eyes and smiles, gently, and finally it feels like Jon is just seeing _him -_ not the stack of tasks Martin’s failed at, not a younger other Martin or some vast conspiracy of expectations against him - just him, and the dear love and loyalty that Martin holds towards him, despite everything they're facing.

Purposefully, Jon folds his fingers over Martin’s own. He looks, for almost the first time Martin might ever have seen, steady. Comfortable. Sure. _Because of me,_ Martin thinks, and in his growing surety he flips his own hand over to tangle their fingers together. 

Jon smiles wider.

“Yes,” he says again, in a voice suffused with warmth and gratitude, and Martin feels the sight of it mix with the grief and fear inside him and light him up with warmth - like the small and burning embers of some great, potential happiness, bright against everything to come. “You’re right. I think it will be.”

**Author's Note:**

> haunted by the upcoming finale: the story


End file.
